The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c9.s1.6

c9.s1.6

There is another problem to attack. Each of these four collections or *Samhitās* is incomplete as literature without certain appendages. These appendages are known as *Brāhmaṇas*. The *Brāhmaṇas*, again, are incomplete without the *Āraṇyakas*, and these last again are incomplete without the *Upaniṣads*. Logically, therefore, we should expect the four items, the *Samhitā* of a *Veda*, the *Brāhmaṇa* of the *Samhitā*, the *Āraṇyaka* of the *Brāhmaṇa*, and the *Upaniṣad* of the *Āraṇyaka* to go together, and constitute one complex. Naturally, therefore, the *Upaniṣad* may be taken to be as old as the *Veda*. It is almost senseless to believe that during certain periods people took interest only in the *Samhitā*, that afterwards they began to take interest in the *Brāhmaṇas*, that later they cultivated the *Āraṇyakas*, and that several hundred years after the compilation of the *Samhitā* people composed or compiled the *Upaniṣads*. From the standpoint of social experience a process of successive emergence of new classes of literature within the orbit of the same *Samhitā* would have hardly any meaning. Sociologically, we should rather be prepared for the circumstance that the *Upaniṣads* were being composed or compiled while the *Samhitās* were being brought together. The process was perhaps that of *pari passu* collection rather than of chronological sequence.